The present invention relates to a new and improved method for the transverse conveying or transfer of strand sections of a multi-strand continuous casting installation onto an adjacently situated cooling bed, and additionally pertains to an improved construction of transverse conveying apparatus for a multi-strand continuous casting installation containing a multiplicity of transport elements, particularly transport pawls, which can be brought along a displacement path out of a rest position into an end or terminal position.
There are known to the art the most different constructions or transverse conveyor apparatuses which, in principle, can be classified into two categories or classes. The first category encompasses equipment which is only operatively correlated to a single cast strand or casting, and in the case of continuous casting installations for a plurality of cast strands there are also provided a number of transverse conveyor apparatuses which convey the finished strand sections, for instance billets or blooms, onto different cooling beds. Such type of installations are unfavorable from the standpoint of their economics. To the extent that such type of equipment design is not promoted for other reasons, there are usually presently employed transverse conveyor apparatuses which simultaneously convey or outfeed a respective strand section for each strand transversely to the roller direction of the severed strand section.
To that end there are provided different constructional designs. For instance, by means of a closed travelling chain equipped with a gripper there is engaged the outermost strand section and such is transversely shifted until all strand sections come to lie adjacent one another laterally of the roller tables.
In German Patent Publication No. 1,816,914, published July 2, 1970 there is known to the art, for instance, a transverse conveyor apparatus for billets which contains a carriage which is moved to-and-fro by a closed or endless traction cable and which is equipped with a number of transport pawls corresponding to the number of strands. During the transverse displacement of the carriage or dolly the transport pawls are upwardly tilted from a non-engaging or ineffectual position into an engaging or effective position. This movement is specifically accomplished in such a manner that initially the last pawl and only by virtue of the engagement of a billet by this last pawl is there upwardly tilted the next forward pawl and so forth, until all of the pawls have engaged a respective billet which are then conjointly displaced in such manner in a clearing or removal movement from the roller tables onto a stand-by or waiting bed or a cooling bed.
What is disadvantageous with all of these designs of transverse conveyor apparatuses is that the clearing or removal movement is accomplished over the entire width of the multi-strand continuous casting installation, and with a sensible working speed there is required a clearing or removal time which already amounts to the order of magnitude of the cycle time during cutting of the billets into short strand sections. This drawback could be compensated by increasing the clearing speed or velocity, but nonetheless such would constitute an appreciably increased expenditure in both energy and machinery costs.